BACKGROUND: 

The 1997 Defense Authorization Act authorized the Secretary of Defense to compensate Vietnamese operatives who participated in specific missions (described below) during the Vietnam War. The Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management Policy) appointed a Commission to adjudicate the individual claims of the commandos, and tasked the Army to provide a voting member for the Commission, establish a Commission Support Staff to process and pay claims determined valid by the Commission, and to provide a Staff Director. The Secretary of the Army tasked this mission to the Deputy Under Secretary of the Army (International Affairs)(DUSA-IA). The Support Staff is a Field Operating Agency of the Army Secretariat, and reports to the Military Deputy to the DUSA-IA. The DUSA-IA is the DoD Executive Agent for providing direct support to the Commission.

• "Predecessor Operations" : 

  Vietnamese individuals recruited and contracted as intelligence agents by the South Vietnamese Government from 1960 to 1963, were trained, equipped and funded by the CIA to conduct covert intelligence operations inside North Vietnam. The concept of this operation, as Army MG (Ret.) John Singlaub testified, was

  "to introduce these intelligence assets into North Vietnam to perform basically three missions. First, was to collect positive intelligence on the North Vietnamese in North Vietnam. The second was to conduct limited and very specific sabotage activities. And finally their mission would be to become a cadre for a resistance operation against the North Vietnamese communist regime."

  Almost all of the agents were either killed or captured by the North Vietnamese. According to an article introduced during these hearings by Sedgwick Tourison, author of Secret Army, Secret War, "[b]etween 1960 and late in 1963, roughly 250 agents sent by the CIA and South Vietnam into North Vietnam were lost…."

   

• OPLAN 34A: 

  Responsibility for the conduct of the operations transferred from the CIA to DoD in January, 1964, when the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Special Operations Group (later changed to "Studies and Observations Group")(MACVSOG) was formed. Despite signs that several of the teams were compromised/captured, DoD continued the operations under the newly formed MACVSOG. According to Mr. Tourison’s Congressional Record article, "[b]etween the spring of 1964 and October 1967, MACVSOG lost 240 more agents inside North Vietnam and scores of agents in adjacent Laos and Cambodia." None were released from North Vietnamese prison camps or reeducation centers in 1973 when known American prisoners were repatriated under the terms of the Paris Peace Accords.

   

• OP35: 

  Another component of MACVSOG, employed American-led teams to conduct cross-border operations, primarily into Laos and along the Lao-Vietnamese border. These operations were conducted from 1965 up until 1972. The 12-man teams normally consisted of 2 or 3 Americans and 9 Vietnamese, primarily from one of the Montagnard tribes or of other minority ethnic extraction. Although these operations were much more successful, perhaps as many as 20 - 30 Vietnamese were taken prisoner by the Communists during this period.